Posted on 02/17/2010 6:49:38 AM PST by TonyfromOz
Yesterday, President Obama announced loan funding approvals for $8 Billion to construct a new Nuclear Power Plant in Georgia, the first to be constructed in the U.S. for more than 30 years. That $8 Billion might seem a lot, and environmentalists are all venting the same old misinformation they always have, saying that money could be better spent on renewable plants. Do the three versions of renewable power stack up on a dollar for dollar basis when compared to Nuclear power? Here I actually do the comparison with links to actual data, and the result is actually no contest. Nuclear is by far the best option, but just one plant is not enough. The money being thrown at renewable power can be much better spent by putting it towards new technology Nuclear plants.
We will need a lot more than 1 or 2 (will it take 30 years to get them built??) when BO shuts down all the coal plants.
Or just get the government out of the way and let the power folks, both renewable and supposedly non renewable (Deep Hot Biosphere), go about the business of powering innovation.
Thermal Depolymerization!
Would you like to see my listing of bridges for sale or do you have one picked out already?
has anyone considered that “maybe” this administration knows the world is heading into the next mini ice age and better get ready to prevent at least some of the US population from freezing to death?
Maybe if DC is destined to become a snowy wasteland much of the year, this nuke plant will provide power to an alternate US capitol- in Atlanta
Yes we need more than one or two plants. France gets an enormous amount of their energy from nuclear. The libs tell us we should be more like the Europeans, except when it comes to nuclear energy.
Don’t expect to see any nuclear power plants built. Obama doesn’t want them. He will get political credit for funding one, but knows it will never get built because it will never maneuver the Dept of Energy, EPA, and a myriad of other federal agencies. So he gets the political credit, but doesn’t ultimately offend his far left base.
Too close to Alabama -— maybe they could move it to ..... the middle of Texas or something, maybe right on the border.
Dead on. The permitting process will take 10 years at best. Then the contruction job will take 3 times as long and cost nowhere near the budget. Then when the operaters try to bring it online, the hordes of lawyers will decend. This is just another kick the can issue for the dims.
Its like every other thing he does. Gives a go ahead and leaves the roadblocks in place.
Money for high speed rail? He offers a tiny fraction of the cost, never mind eminent domain and environmental fights that will cost more than the fantasy choo choo.
Private industry partnership with NASA? Its just fine if they don’t mind forever being limited to taxi driving and freight hauling to government facilities under government contract. The outer space treaty makes sure that’s all they’ll ever do.
Nuke plants? Never mind turning his back on Yucca mountain, EPA control and even new agencies to study waste disposal.
Not one of them will happen.
If obama is sincere about expanding nuclear power, then Yucca Flats will be approved to go into operation.
If not, it won't.
And while unions may get expensive contracts to build huge expensive facilities, nuclear fuel will not be delivered to those facilities because the EPA, other enviro bureaucrats and anti nuke lobbies will stonewall over fuel storage and waste disposal among other issues. It will be win win for obama. He gets to posture like a reasonable concerned president, and award his union buddies contracts and his other lobbyists mega bucks for “enviro studies” - all to build empty shells he knows will never go on line.
Watch for it.
Massive amounts of money down one more hole.
I remember reading somewhere that there are actually 16 of them ready to be built awaiting (and awaiting and awaiting and awaiting) regulatory approval.
Hurrah for Georgia!
Hoping this will one day lower my energy bill.
He’ll let the unions make a few billion digging holes and pouring concrete, but it will just be a big empty tomb for our tax dollars. It will never be fired up.
Hey, it’s more than Bush and a GOP-majority Congress did... and he’s doing it in the face of his uber-Green supporters. I give him credit for this one... if it actually comes online... Heck, even if it doesn’t, it help future administrations lay the groundwork for more.
The license application for the Vogtile plants was submitted to the NRC in March of 2008. Here is the NRC Licensing Review Schedule for the Vogtile plants.
Looks like the earliest date they could begin construction would be in the Spring of 2011.
Here is a link to all the applications for new plants currently before the NRC.
“The money being thrown at renewable power can be much better spent by putting it towards new technology Nuclear plants.”
We need to legitimize the mass production of micro nukes in the 1-100 megawatt range. Several companies are in the design phase of such plants, and they offer numerous advantages in security, distributed power generation, and economy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/business/energy-environment/24nuke.html
Energy Department plans to announce the first of $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for building new reactors.
The guarantees were authorized in a bill passed by Congress in 2005.
It has taken four years for the department to set up a system to evaluate applications and determine how much the borrowers will be charged for the guarantees to compensate the government for taking the risk.
The US Department of Energy (DoE) has invited applications for a total of up to $30.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for renewable energy, nuclear and front-end nuclear power facility projects.
Loan guarantees from the DoE are to encourage the commercial use of new or significantly improved energy technologies. The three solicitations are in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy and advanced transmission and distribution technologies (up to $10 billion); nuclear power facilities (up to $18.5 billion); and advanced nuclear facilities for the front-end of the nuclear fuel cycle (up to $2 billion).
The authority to issue loan guarantees amounting to these sums was provided to the DoE in the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2008 and is consistent with the Department’s FY2009 congressional budget request. The goals of the program are reducing reliance on imported sources of energy by increasing energy efficiency and diversifying the US energy mix, while improving the environment.
In the 2005 Energy Policy Act federal loan guarantees for clean energy sources were one of five initiatives supported. In October 2007, the DoE announced that it would guarantee the full amount of loans covering up to 80% of the cost of new clean energy projects including advanced nuclear power plants.
“”better get ready to prevent at least some of the US population from freezing to death?””
Don’t think they are concerned about us - by “at least some”, you must mean “”them”” and I’m sure they will make sure they are taken care of.
They couldn’t care less about the rest of us.
Said Obama, confident in the fact the eco-terrorist-envrionut, tree huggers will keep this action tied up in Federal Court for a millenium.
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